Grand Theft Aiden: The #WatchDogsIV Mod

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I’m eternally surprised by what modders manage to do with Grand Theft Auto IV, especially as Rockstar never released official mod tools. Modders needed to build tools before they could build mods, a bit like Minecraft–only you end up with high-fidelity murder rather than a monolithic phallus.

The latest wonder rising from GTA 4 borrows an awful lot from another open-world murder simulator: Watch Dogs. Mass-murderer-with-a-heart-of-gold Aiden Pearce is now hacking Liberty City with his magical telephone, popping barriers out the ground, riding trains, spying through cameras, screwing with traffic lights, and generally hacking the planet. It’s a remarkable feat.

The creators of the #WatchDogsIV mod say it’s “inspired by” Ubisoft’s game but insist it’s “not a copy,” but it does borrow an awful lot (assets included, it seems). You can overload the power grid to cause a blackout, make ATMs spray money to draw crowds that’ll inevitably start fighting each other, burst lights, futz with traffic lights to cause pile-ups, set off car alarms–you know, Watch Underscore Dogs stuff. But in a different game with a different simulation, where this won’t all work entirely the same. Also you get to be Captain Boringpants and hit men with sticks and do that whole ‘pulling your mask up’ thing.

Download Hash Watch Dogs IV here. Installation is simplified by using the OpenIV package installer, though the makers suggest a few extras you might too. Combine it with a fancy graphics mod or two and lawks, you’ll have yourself a right treat of murder and datacrime for the weekend!

Gwiffle always was awful. But it’s ‘just’ awful DRM. UPlay is both awful DRM and a patching system that half the time doesn’t work, and the the half is both partly manual and runs at sub-dialup speed. I’ll take bad DRM delivered by Steam’s servers, thanks.

I’ve never had Steam ignore my account details when purchasing a game, autocreate a new account called shop-some-really-stupid-long-sequence, then refuse to tie that game to my actual account, forcing me to now deal with 2 logins for the one goddamn service.

So no, it’s not the not-Steam-ness that makes it bad, it’s Ubisoft’s shitty behaviour.

I can tell you’ve not been given the “Full uPlay experience” if that’s what you think people hate about it. It’s completely broken from A to Z; try playing an older Ubisoft game, and you’ll soon know why people hate it.

I can think of no other DRM which actually bothers you *inside the game* you’re playing to “register to get the full experience”, after which it will kindly tell you that your (unique) uPlay key is already in use (by you) then promptly BAN YOU for a few hours, meaning you can’t even start the game up again and resume playing (nor reset your password, because that gets you a BAN too). It’s fucking horrible and I will give Ubisoft games a miss until they get rid of it.

I used to be a day-one full price buyer. No question asked about the price.

I pretty much don’t buy games anymore. In the last ten years or so I went f from buying several games a month to barely a handful a year. Of the thirty or so people I used to LAN regularly with, only two still buy games on the PC. We all had roughly the same player/customer profile,and we all consider Steam and its copycats to have basically destroyed PC gaming for us – even the couple that grumpily uses them.

Those of us that are not disgusted to the point of not wanting to support the industry anymore would totally pay a premium for a product version that comes with full functionality, no DRM, no mandatory third party client attached.

Butt the message we got is crystal clear: we don’t matter anymore. We’re not wanted, and we should go our separate way.

I’ve enjoyed it. It is shallow and it is repetitive. But it is also solid within those parameters. I’ve found it as enjoyable as I do a basically mindless but well-crafted action film. Something like True Lies.

If the 90’s-style, cyberpunk-lite conceit sounds like an appealing fantasy to indulge in, it’s fun. But it does take a fairly big suspension of one’s critical eye.

Aiden is pretty much a blank. But I mentally RP him as a fanatical believer in what he views a war against a police state, to the point of any means are justified. Which is a character I personally find a bit more interesting to play than the the weak-sauce personal tragedy the actual narrative cooks up.

Kudos to whoever made this. Amazing work. :D Sure it’s a bit rough around the edges but they managed to pack in an astonishing amount of WD’s features into it, and even some new ones. The “free money” bit was great.